Mystery of the Edit

[sr71plt]

real question: Since nothing is ever really finished, how does anyone determine that the current shape of anything they mess around with artistically/creatively/literarily will be presented for eyes or ears or brains other than the one who creates/makes It?

Sorry if I helped put the thread off topic. I responded to a paragraph I found interesting.

On this question. First, I wouldn't accept that nothing is ever really finished. I think once it is published, that version is finished. Another version of it changed and published later is another, varient work. Whether a published version of something changes its meaning (and it actually has a different meaning to different readers the instance it's published anyway) isn't a function of whether that version is "finished" or not.

The straightforward response to the specific question (after disagreeing with the premise), at least in my own perspective is that, for most works I edit, I know that they "will be presented for eyes or ears or brains other than the one who creates/makes It" because they have already been contracted for publication by a publisher and will be published for readers to buy/read after I edit it and the author reviews and approves the edits (and someone inputs the changes in the layout file).

 

[hmmnmm]

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[sr71plt]

maybe so, but...

give one roughly author-edited work to ten different people with equal expertize in editing, I bet you'd end up with ten variations of the work.
So, maybe at any given time of any given publishing, those particular marks on the pages are 'finished'. Still, from the first mark the author made on a blank piece of paper until it appears in a final form for popular consumption, it could have taken innumerable forms.

For more layman purposes like myself, here for instance, where the feel is more experimental, and where submitting work is much more lax, it is sometimes easy to submit something in haste, other times hesitate and, as Angeline mentioned, over-edit to the point of sterilization.

I wonder if it has something to do with the more you work with something the closer you get to it, which makes it harder to let go, because whether it is author-edited or editor-edited, once it's out, the writer will almost always see places that could've been better done.

Just lost the train of thought...

I don't follow the "maybe so" bit. It's "finished" to different people at different points. When the writer turns it over for editing or publishing, that's the writer's first "finished" version. Anyone who does anything to after that creates another (for them) "finished" version. After the author approves an edited version, that's another "finished" version. When it's set in print or published to an Internet page, there's yet another "finished" version. If it's changed after that and republished, it's a different "finished." Each time a change is made, there's a new work. That doesn't many any of the previous versions weren't "finished." Somehow I think this goes with what you were saying up the thread in another context.

If it's been published in some form, it's "finished" even if you, as the author, see things you want to change--until you actually change them, creating a new work out of it.

 

[hmmnmm]

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[unpredictablebijou]

arg.

this is all terribly brilliant and completely valid, and stuff like that. but perhaps I represent an alternative, possibly anthropomorphic point of view, or maybe the word is organic.

besides making poetry, I sometimes make paintings, and I also make sculpture. Hanging kinetic sculpture, "mobiles" by some definition. Making these hanging sculptures has taught me a great deal about poetry, because a piece of art is a living thing that directs its own creation. At an initial stage, a piece has no "life;" it is a series of weights and balances, or in the case of poetry a series of words in a particular order. But at some point, a sculpture will take life, and become organic, and start to move. It begins to react to motion, to breeze, to air currents. At that point, it is an independent entity, something that is separate from myself, something that has its own agenda, and its own ideas of what it wishes to communicate.

There's a moment like that with a poem (ergh, I hate that word; I will hereafter refer to that Word Thing as a Piece). One creates, and builds, and makes a thing. But at a certain point, with certain pieces, they take a life of their own and begin forming their own ideas. They declare their intent, their range of motion. At that point your task as a writer transforms: you are no longer a Creator. You are a Parent. Your job is to expedite the development of this independent creature, to assist it in its own goals, not to impose your own agendae and goals upon it.

So there are, as far as I see it, two stages of editing a piece. The first stage is to take a piece that has basic value to a place in which it can begin interacting with other people. You make it basic, sensible, understandable, communicative. You bring it to life. After that, it begins a stage in which it takes its own course, and your job is to expedite that course of interaction and communication with the outside world. it becomes something independent of you, something you have created and then relinquished to have its own interactions, and your job is to assist those interactions.

That's the dicey part of editing: to let go of a piece and let it have its own life, let it do what it wants to do, rather than what you thought you might want it to do. Not all pieces do this. Not even ten percent of mine make that particular cut. But some will take life and determine their own course, and a good writer will honor that course, and assist the piece in saying what IT wants to say to a larger population.

a midnight rant. Hope it is worthwhile.

bijou

 

[foehn2]

a midnight rant. Hope it is worthwhile.

bijou

Your rants are always worthwhile, bijou. But now I've forgotten the question.

 

[hmmnmm]

one of their own pieces (children, creations, poems, tales)?

And of course, each child is unique.
When do you let that child go?
Maybe they are ready to go just as they are, and they can make it on their own. Maybe another will do better if they pass through a brief refining academy.
And of course, the ones who appear destined to change the world in positive ways end up bums and drunks. And the one you didn't have much hope for, somehow reaches and touches and 'succeeds'

I can't paint or draw (wish I could), but I like to doodle and experiment with lines and circles and stuff and occasionally study how painters do it. I do play the guitar (not well) and I always preferred to make up my own stuff (I can't sing, either). Also dabbled with the camera, which I'm also so-so at, but... I was thinking about this the other day - sort a companion ponder with thoughts that resulted in the birth of this thread- writing seems to make more sense when I study or explore other ideas, like music, painting, photography, etc, than the conscious study of writing itself. I'm still really interested in the illustrated and audio poetry but haven't got anywhere on it yet, maybe because with all the possibilities, it's tough to know where to begin.

And bij, I thought it a very eloquent and well-composed rant.